Earth’s Demise Featuring Your Second Skin

If you’ve never meaningfully considered the clothes you put on your body, besides the way it looks, then you’ve been living an unfortunately uneducated and unsustainable existence. Your shopping choices not only effect your image or social status, but also the health of our planet.

As many people prefer to spend less but gain more, cheap, fast and nasty clothing is being made to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for new fashion. This type of clothing manufacturing is called ‘fast fashion’. A plethora of chemicals and plastics are being used to produce this appealing apparel, and are made to fall apart within a matter of months. On top of this, a huge number of garments end up sitting in landfills around the world. This is the reality of many massive fashion brands including H&M, Zara and Forever 21.

Fast fashion generally refers to low cost clothing collections that mimic current fashion trends. As trends change rapidly, new styles and trends become obsolete in a matter of weeks. Brands such as H&M, Zara, TopShop and Forever 21 can have up to 52 different fashion seasons per year. Since this method of clothing production began in the 1980’s, consumers today are buying 60% more clothing and wearing them for half the time (Greenpeace, 2016). In Australia alone, an average of 27kgs per person of new clothing and other textiles is purchased every year (ABC, 2017). With millions of items being sold every year, where does all the excess go?

Annually, over 80 million items of clothing are produced around the globe, and after its short lifespan, three out of four of these garments will end up in landfills or be incinerated (Greenpeace, 2016). Only a quarter will be recycled or donated and, of those, only about 15% will be resold locally in opportunity shops (Milburn, 2016). Petroleum based materials such as nylon, polyester and acrylic will take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to fully decompose in these landfills. More natural but equally as processed materials including silk, cotton and rayon are just as bad, as they’ve been “bleached, dyed, printed on and scoured in chemical baths” (Kibbey, 2016), making them impossible to compost.

Speaking of chemical bleaching, the processing and chemical dying of raw materials uses over 1.7 million tonnes of various chemicals globally, including highly hazardous chemicals such as PFCs (per- and poly-fluorinated chemicals) that leave a lasting stain on our environment (Greenpeace, 2016). The runoff from textile factories around the world poisons local waterways, while chemicals seep into groundwater supplies when fast fashion is left in landfills or permeates the air if sent to an incinerator. Water consumption is also an issue. About 2 billion pairs of jeans are produced annually and 1 pair alone takes 7,000 litres of water to manufacture and produce. Likewise, 1 t-shirt takes 2,700 litres to produce. The average person would survive on that amount of drinking water for 900 days!

So how do we fix this? While donating and buying old clothes at second-hand stores is better than throwing them in the bin, there is a lot more that can be done every day to combat this issue. Researching and buying from brands that support environmentally sustainable practices can go a long way in terms of decreasing demand at big brand stores like H&M. Look for more sustainable materials like organic cotton, hemp and organic bamboo that are durable and biodegradable. Similarly, look for clothing using natural dyes as opposed to chemical-heavy ones. Instead of throwing away that old shirt, why not upcycle? Grab your sewing kit, blow off the dust and remake the shirt into something new. Quality over quantity always! It’s that easy.

References:

Greenpeace:

• http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/fast-fashion-drowning-world-fashion-revolution/blog/56222/

• http://www.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/briefings/toxics/2016/Fact-Sheet-Timeout-for-fast-fashion.pdf

ABC: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-12/australias-obsession-with-new-clothes-hurting-the-environment/8177624

EcoWatch: http://www.ecowatch.com/fast-fashion-1994121280.html

#Society #Environment